Last week Yext, a service that helps businesses synchronize their listings across the Web, announced a $27 million round of funding. (We heard it was at a $270 million valuation.) Today, it’s launching a new version of that service, aptly dubbed “The Next Yext.”Co-founder and CEO Howard Lerman says there are three main additions to the new version of Yext. First, there’s a new overview screen, which includes counters showing �the total number of listing updates for a business, as well as suggestions for expanding their profiles[...]

Bunchball is announcing 10 new apps today that will “gamify” (make non-game apps and processes more game-like) websites and enterprises in a quick and painless fashion. The Spark Series of apps will make it easy for companies to adopt gamification and thereby increase customer engagement or energize employees.That’s a big advance that could make gamification, which could generate a lot more revenue for companies, much easier to adopt. Often, past efforts have been tougher for companies, sometimes requiring weeks of custom work and handholding. Bunchball built its Nitro gamification platform for companies to adopt, but the Spark apps are a subset of the capability, geared f[...]

CraftStudio closely mimics the act of making a card or any other papercraft: sans the actual scissors, construction paper, glue or glitter.�Instead, you do your crafting via�the iPad’s interface �– tap, swipe, zoom, rotate. For adding glitter, for instance, you trace where you want the glue to go, pick your glitter color and physically shake the iPad. At that point you’ll see the glitter fall down like a snow globe onto your card or project.The app takes design cues from Apple: it capitalizes heavily on real-life nostalgia. Much like the leather-stitched calendar of Mac OS’s iCal, you click on the vintage film camera in your craft tray and you get the option to impor[...]

As Google and Apple step up their mapping efforts, they are apparently raising some eyebrows in Washington. Today, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer wrote a letter to Google’s CEO Larry Page and Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. In this letter, he asks the them about their “highly sensitive photography equipment.” In order to avoid that his constituents in Buffalo have to worry about Google and Apple catching them barbecuing on their back deck, Schumer is asking the two companies to include a number of privacy and security provisions. Schumer is also worried that criminals and terrorists could use these detailed images to “create more complete schematic maps of the power and[...]

At the helm of Bluebox is CEO and co-founder Caleb Sima, a serial�entrepreneur�who considers himself an old man in the�security�industry�even�though he’s just thirty-one.According to Sima, Bluebox was born out of the realization that, while mobile use is growing rapidly in the enterprise, security�is not. “When you are looking at mobile, security is one of the top critical concerns in terms of adoption,” Sima told VentureBeat.The problem? It’s been product first and�security�second. “None of the big players are giving to the�security�guys what they are looking for,” he said.“Our goal really is to create a unique solution that does not exist today[...]